


The Last Battlemage

by Zalphon



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls I: Arena, Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls: Legends
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22154671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zalphon/pseuds/Zalphon
Summary: The last of the Imperial Battlemages after the fall of the Septim Empire tells records his story and preserves the history of the Imperial Battlemage Corps of the Septim Empire.
Kudos: 2





	The Last Battlemage

**Prologue**

_By Matthew Baris, Last Guardian of the Battlespire_

I was barely seventeen when they knocked on my family’s door and I will never forget that day, because some things you can’t forget and the last time you ever see your family is one of those you never forget. It was cold because schluffed on my chores once again and we didn’t have enough firewood and the snows had come harder than we expected and the winds were blowing so hard that my little sister and I watched the trees get jerked around. My mother, she was in the middle of making a stew—cubed venison, potatoes, carrots, celery, coriander seed, orange zest, garlic, onion, a few other things I forget, but I remember that was my favorite dish. It was hearty and filling, just the things I liked, and I was looking forward to my bowl of it, but that knock on the door changed everything as those kinds of knocks always do. 

It wasn’t me who answered the door but my father who opened it to see two people, both appearing to be of Breton descent, at our door. One was a man, about an inch or two shorter than me with hazelnut eyes and a crooked nose and the other was a woman with green eyes that caught my attention more than anything else, but I should have been paying more attention tot heir garb than their faces, but I wasn’t thinking too much about it—just supper. That’s what I was thinking about. But you know, I never did get that supper because those two had come for one reason and one reason only: Me. 

They pulled out a scroll signed by the Emperor himself stating that I was to be taken into the custody and care of the Imperial Battlemage Corps. I didn’t know what to say and my father protested. “You can’t take my son! He’s my only boy! You can’t have him!” he hollered, getting redder and redder with every word, but they didn’t care. They grabbed my arm and when they did, he swung with all his might at the man and broke his nose and that’s when things got out of control. They shoved me down to the ground and the woman slammed her fist against the door and then moved out of the way.

My father continued beating the Breton man into submission until the door swung open and I looked at the creature in the doorway. I had never seen anything like it, not even in my worst nightmares, but it was there. It was real. I would later come to recognize this creature as a Dremora and him specifically as Azavin. He did not say a word, because his presence with it a weight that no words could hope to match, and there fell a deathly silence in the home I had grown up in for the past seventeen years. I personally couldn’t stand up—I was paralyzed with fear of this—this thing—it was like some sort of monster from a story, but it was real and it looked at me with its red-black eyes and asked, “Are you Matthew Baris?” It spoke with an otherworldly depth and with gravelly tones about it and I continued lying there in shock.

It turned its gaze to my father whose eyes burned with hatred as he responded, “You’re not taking my boy. I won’t let you! He’s my only son and I don’t give a damn what the Emperor or anyone else said, you’re not taking him!”

Azavin tilted his head before turning to my mother and sister, “Leave the room.”

My mother was in as much shock as I was and they both stood there processing what this creature had said for a moment before the Bretons shuffled them into the next room. They offered little in the way of resistance as they were too terrified to speak, much less put up a fight and as I look back, I’m glad for that. I just wish my father had been the same way.

The Dremora turned his gaze back to my father. “This is not your fight, Samuel Baris. We will take him and you will let us.” And it was in the moments following him saying that that everything to go in slow motion as my father lunged at the Dremora with a fist and the Dremora drew his sword and impaled with superhuman speed. My father too was stopped in his tracks as he felt the sword in his gut and he looked up at Azavin with a look of confusion, but Azavin ripped the sword out and kicked my father to the ground. He laid there in a pool of his own blood staring at me as I watched it all play out and I could see the fear in his eyes—the terror. I just wish I could’ve done something, but there was nothing I could do.

“Matthew Baris, come.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I had watched had just done and I wasn’t going to try to fight him. He was too fast—too strong. I didn’t have a chance and so I followed him because I didn’t really have much of a choice. The two Bretons followed behind us and they recognized the cocktail of shock, trauma, and horror that colored my face but they were silent as I walked out into the freezing cold, walking away from my father dying on the floor of our living room and from the sobbing of my mother and sister. If there is any day in my life that I will never forget, it is this one, because this is the day that everything I loved was taken from me, but it was more than that. It was the day that my story truly began and it is this story that I am going to share with you, because I am the last of the Imperial Battlemages and my story is their story and their story will not be forgotten.

_-Matthew Baris, Last Guardian of the Battlespire_


End file.
